This is not a fascinating historical narrative of the early 17th century French Canadian pioneers. Rather it is a detailed and technical demographic analysis of the core population of about 3,380 French settlers of the St. Lawrence Valley prior to 1680.

As stated on the dustjacket "[this book] is of interest for students of Canadian, family, demographic, and migration history, as well as population genetics and several areas of sociology."

The book is densely populated with charts, graphs and tables with titles such as "Relative Importance of the Pioneers in Genetic Endowment of French-speaking Population of Quebec" and "Distribution of Single Male Immigrant Arrivals and Female Entries in Marriage Market before 1663, by 5-Year Period".

It is a dry treatise not particularly inviting or entertaining to the casual lay reader.

After having spent a wonderful Christmas season in Norfolk last year, I looked forward to reading a book focusing on "The Great British Christmas". I was disappointed to find that this book is an anthology of bits and pieces of essay, poetry, caroles and anecdotes dating back to the 17th century or earlier.

The two essays that I really enjoyed were "Tales of the Christmas Cracker" and "All Aboard for Santa's Grotto", both written by Maria Hubert. Were it not for Ms.Hubert's introductory remarks to some of the other entries in the book, I probably wouldn't have guessed they had any relation to Christmas.

If you're trying to find the origin of various religious practices and differences this is not the book. Green assumes that reader knows what various terms are and often I did not (and I'm studying to be a Baptist Preacher). Why does the Catholic Bible have extra books from the protestant? Couldn't find it in here. How did the Baptists rise to dominance in the U.S.? Who knows? It's not here. The text is dry and unenlightening. I believe there are many better books for the uninitiated and even the fairly well initiated.